watches weblogs

“The Apple stores have worked out well. It’s a fantastic consumer experience,” Musk told AutoWeek. “We wanted a nontraditional automotive experience, and we have it.”

Audi recently said it will have an all-electric car in 10 years. General Motors is expected to bring out the Chevy Volt in 2010.

Tesla Roadsters ready to roll. Click on the image to see a photo gallery of Roadsters in production.

The Roaster will have a range of 220 miles per charge and the mileage equivalent of 135 miles per gallon.

The fancy showroom near Beverly Hills takes its inspiration from Apple stores, Musk said.

Tesla Motors opened its first dealership in Santa Monica, Calif., on Friday, attracting a gaggle of reporters.

Think said it will bring its electric town cars to the United States next year.

The company plans to make a luxury sedan next year called the Whitestar that will come in two versions: an all-electric model that will run entirely on its lithium ion battery pack, and a range-extended vehicle that will also use liquid fuel to extend its range.

(Credit:
Corinne Schulz/CNET Networks)

The sex appeal of the Roadster is rooted in the electric motor as well: with powerful torque, it can go from standing still to 60 mph in less than 4 seconds.

The company told the Associated Press that it is impressed with demand: it has taken 600 orders for the Roadster and has a waiting list of another 400. CEO Elon Musk owns the first one produced.

The location of the site in the tony Westwood neighborhood reflects the high-end shopping experience it intends to create for the flashy $109,000 Tesla Roadster. The next store, slated to open in San Carlos, Calif. in a couple months, will be set up to appeal to the Silicon Valley tech elite.

Tesla can lay claim to putting all-electric
cars back on the map, with its racy Roadster. But it certainly won’t be alone for long.

You can also submit your own questions, now or during the event, at the Debate Webcast site.

See also: Complete coverage of campaign ‘08 from CBS News.

You can check out the post-debate Webcast from the first presidential debate, between John McCain and Barack Obama, here: CBS Webcast: Examining McCain-Obama debate No. 1.

The debate kicks off at 9:00 p.m. EDT, and you can follow it live online at the CBS News Debate Webcast site. Immediately after the debate, stay with the site for Web-only analysis and commentary with Katie Couric, the CBS News political team, and guests.

The sole vice presidential debate of the 2008 election season takes place Thursday night, pitting Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin against Sen. Joe Biden.

We’ll do the same for the final two presidential debates, on October 7 and on October 15.

The 90-minute debate will take place at Washington University in St. Louis and is set to be moderated by Gwen Ifill of PBS.

So it’s understandable that something as new as a social aggregator has a long way to go, Sultan continued. “They still need to enhance functionality to allow you to dial it down or filter only what’s relevant,” he said. “When either AI (artificial intelligence) technology, ’smart’ filters, or other user-based filters are implemented, the model has a high chance of taking off.”

Don’t get me wrong. I think we need some way to tidy up the messy social Web. What OpenID is trying to do for log-in and password management, lifestreaming services are hoping to accomplish for the voyeuristic itch to know exactly what all our online contacts are doing. That’s a good thing.

But taking overkill and putting it all in one place doesn’t mean that it’s not overkill anymore. Consider it social-networking’s first identity crisis.

Whoever manages to mesh all this into a single “social dashboard” just might be the next hero of the Web.

Then there’s the fact that, despite the information overload that a social feed aggregator provides, it’s still feature-light. Plaxo Pulse and FriendFeed, perhaps the most “social” of the bunch, let users comment on items and add favorites; many of the others, like Socialthing, are meant to be more along the lines of a personal reference. In either case, none of them replace the need to still log in and visit all the Flickrs and Twitters and Diggs from which they collect data.

Technology blogs have been chirping enthusiastically about “lifestreaming” services like FriendFeed and Socialthing, which claim to provide an answer to growing complaints about “social-networking fatigue.” They sort updates across networking and community sites into a single destination–which, in a sense, actually might be the social-media world’s equivalent of reversing global warming.

“The big sell for these sorts of products is the tipping point at which users will see these as a viable alternative to manage their many profiles,” social media strategist Oz Sultan told me in an interview. He compared it to the rise of universal instant-messaging clients like Adium and Trillian several years ago, which took off amid the disconnect between chat software from AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo, and more. “It becomes either overkill or a system resource hog,” Sultan said.

With all the talk about social network aggregators over the past few weeks, you’d think they were going to reverse global warming.

“Right now, we just simply feed all this stuff in, and it can be a bit overwhelming,” said Matt Galligan, founder of Socialthing. One of the company’s goals, he explained, is to be able to showcase “interesting” updates without requiring the user to do a whole lot of manual prioritizing. “Getting the most important stuff to you is what I really want to do,” he said.

To anyone with more than three or four social-networking profiles, lifestreaming services should be a godsend. That is, until you consider the flip side: too much information, and for the most part, not much flexibility on the picking-and-choosing front. A single, giant feed of dozens of Flickr photo albums (”Grand Canyon Vacation Album #3!”) alongside Facebook status updates (”Brad is at the office”) and Twitter minutiae (”I really need a shower!!!”) turns us on to the realization that even our friends broadcast a whole lot of dumb stuff that we don’t really care to read about.

“Social-media aggregators provide a high-level view of activity taking place on social networks, but do not replace the experience of being immersed within them,” commented Eric Litman, chairman of social-media agency Aux Interactive. “So much of the tone of the dialogue in social networks is set by the user experience of the networks themselves.”

Unfortunately, they still don’t get rid of the hot air.

To an extent, the lifestreaming services have an excuse. “A lot of (lifestreaming) is early to market,” Sultan said. This is, after all, the fast-paced world of Web applications, where it’s common to announce or roll out a product eons before it’s truly ready (hello, OpenSocial). With small start-ups, it’s less likely that someone else will replicate the idea first, although the fact that there’s already a glut of lifestreaming services does sort of render that point moot.

Let me get this straight: The last time I checked, I had accounts on Facebook, MySpace.com, Twitter, Flickr, Plaxo, Digg, Tumblr, Pownce, and probably a bunch of others I’m forgetting–that’s not even counting whatever I do with my Google and Yahoo accounts. Now I’m supposed to choose between Pulse, FriendFeed, Digsby, Socialthing, Spokeo, Profilactic, and goodness knows what other start-ups that offer me the ability to aggregate my contacts’ activity from all the aforementioned social networks, and more. Oh, great.

That’s really the final word on lifestreaming services: they help out, but simply don’t do enough to clean up the social-media experience. Beyond simple aggregation, it’s a whole new can of worms–I can handle multiple e-mail and IM accounts through Digsby, update Twitter and Pownce and Jaiku through Twhirl, and take care of all my photo- and video-uploading needs through the Flock browser. That’s enough to make any geek want an aggregator for the aggregators.

Write simple journal or diary entries with Penzu. Whatever you jot down it will save in the cloud for later retrieval.

One thing Penzu does a little better than other Web-based note takers is structure your docs like a diary, and stack each entry as its own page. You can hop back and forth between them with relative ease, and Penzu is smart enough to put the most-recently created docs on top. Also integrated are images, which you can upload from your computer at up to 5MB a pop. They’ll sit in the margin and out of the way of the text. A simple mouse-over will let you see them in full resolution.

(Credit:
CNET Networks)

I’m not kidding when I say Penzu is the most realistic re-creation of paper I’ve seen on the Web. The service has a serious leg up on its pulp-born competition with a slick looking college-rule that holds all your thoughts (intelligent or not) and saves them to the cloud. When it comes time to print them, they’ll come out just like they look like on the page, sans rulings of course.

Up until a week ago I would have found this little service to have a nice leg up on Google Docs, which I usually use to jot down notes when I’m in meetings or interviews with start-ups. In those situations I’m usually not in need of Google’s more advanced editing features, and want something that will simply retain my notes in case of hardware catastrophe.

(Via Ehub)

However, if you’re looking for some really basic necessities like indentation, hyperlinks, and a way to search through your past work, you might want to stick with one of the more complex tools like Gdocs or Zoho Writer.

I wrote a few weeks back that Google has discovered developers and, as part of that, has significantly invested in open source.

I’m not sure what happened, but give full credit to Chris DiBona and others at Google who have agitated for greater open-source participation at Google. It’s amazing to see how open source is finally becoming mainstream for Web companies like Facebook and Reddit, not that they’re simply using open source, which they always have, but that they’re actually contributing back.

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For all the bile that I and others have spewed at Google over the years for its adoption of open source, with little in the way of contributions back, it’s amazing to see the trickle of open source from Google turn into an absolute flood. In just the past two weeks, we’ve seen Google open-source the following:

Browser Sync, a “Firefox extension that continuously synchronizes your browser settings.” Google is abandoning Browser Sync but wants to make sure it doesn’t bury the dead without ensuring its code can live on as developers see fit.
Ratproxy, an application security testing tool. Protocol Buffers, or Google’s Data Interchange Format, which “allow[s] you to define simple data structures in a special definition language, then compile them to produce classes to represent those structures in the language of your choice.”

It’s a fantastic change of heart. It will be interesting to see how it shifts the competitive landscape of the Web.

“Typically when a company settles a patent lawsuit, it focuses on getting safety for itself,” said Rob Tiller, Vice President and Assistant General Counsel, IP [Red Hat]. “But that was not enough for us, we wanted broad provisions that covered our customers, who place trust in us, and the open source community, whose considerable efforts benefit our business.”

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This is a watershed moment for open source and, as Groklaw notes, for the GNU General Public License:

Now we have the proof [PDF].

Most of the agreement is typical language, but [Red Hat] explains the parts that are specific to this agreement, which is groundbreaking. It’s living proof that the GPL can function as intended, and without compromise, while still dealing with US patent law.

Red Hat continues to demonstrate open-source business leadership by not compromising its standards. It deserves accolades for protecting downstream open-source users. Microsoft should take a page out of Red Hat’s book as it seeks to entice open-source developers to its platforms.

A few weeks ago Red Hat reported that it had reached a groundbreaking patent deal with a selection of patent trolls that put the community, not Red Hat, first.

How will this merger affect your listening habits? Write in to TalkBack and let us know.

Updated at 4:45 p.m. PDT to clarify that portable receivers are capable of receiving live program signals.

To tell the truth, I don’t listen to terrestrial radio, or traditional free radio, much anymore, unless there is a game I can’t get on television. Indeed, “free radio” offers one of the more exciting and attractive music options in the form of HD radio. Unfortunately, some four years after HD radio hit airwaves, consumers have not embraced the new format, which ultimately suffers in comparison with satellite radio because of its limited range. If I weren’t so pleased with Sirius’ music programming and the fact that it’s offered as part of my Dish subscription, I would probably spring for an HD receiver to plug into my A/V home receiver. But I keep waiting for an affordable A/V receiver to come on the market that has HD radio built in as part of the tuner. When that happens, expect home satellite subscriptions to wane a little.

For many prospective customers, a key sticking point was the different selections of sports programming offered exclusively by each provider. A few years back, I wanted to make a present of a Sirius subscription to a friend who spends a lot of time driving around Northern California, especially in places that don’t get AM/FM signals. After sampling XM and Sirius’ music selections, I knew that she would enjoy the Sirius offerings over the XM offerings. But XM broadcasts more games of the sports she enjoyed–just not all of them. There really wasn’t a clear winner. So, to keep from saddling her with the wrong or incomplete service, I opted against the gift. Basically, the lack of a comprehensive offering cost the industry a customer.

You might think that the satellite industry has the upper hand in broadcasting. But while we’re on the topic of things we’re waiting for, let’s look at some of the things the satellite industry can improve. While Sirius now touts portable units as being capable of receiving live signals, many users complain of spotty or poor reception while on the go. Also, while traffic and weather reports for a few metropolitan areas is great, satellite radio can’t provide the same content as local news radio stations, so it would be nice have a portable unit that also gets AM/FM radio stations.

As a prerequisite for FCC approval, the companies agreed to freeze subscription rates for three years. If they try to jack the prices on consumers, expect consumers to change the dial, especially with the wide variety of options that are available to consumers today.

Critics, however, will tell you that the merger will result in a monopoly. While the elimination of immediate industry competition will create a de facto monopoly, satellite radio is not the only source of music, talk, or sports broadcasting available to consumers. People are getting their music from many sources today. Besides satellite radio, people are finding their favorite tunes on Internet radio, MP3 players, music-playing cell phones and even traditional terrestrial radio.

The marriage of satellite radio providers Sirius and XM has finally received the blessing of the Federal Communications Commission on Friday. Now we can all finally get the game we want.

(Disclosure: I listen to music-only Sirius at home via Dish Network and a complete subscription in my wife’s
car. The only financial interest I have in either company comes in the form of monthly subscription bills.)

I suspect that this was a dilemma faced by many listeners who were in search of more than their local radio stations could offer. But the merger means that listeners will be able to choose from a menu to add programming a la carte. For subscribers, this is a big win in programming. You can also bet that the prospect of replacing existing receivers will irritate early adopters.

Go to the LDS Church’s employment site and type “open source” into the search box. You’ll find several requirements for open-source savvy engineers (including someone familiar with Hyperic - got something to tell me, Javier? Is my tithing paying for your
Wii addiction?), but this is the one that I find fascinating (and encouraging):

Additionally, this person will lead efforts to establish the development community. This will require initiative and creativity to identify and coordinate volunteer developers who are willing and able to contribute to Church software development initiatives.

Open source has clearly gone mainstream when religions start requiring it on employment applications.

I’d hazard a guess that many already are. If they’re not, they soon will.

All that said, the real news in this is that open source must be mainstream when it is being promoted from the, er, pulpit. If the LDS Church starts requesting open-source development expertise in its job openings, how long until your school district, fire department, etc. all start to ask for the same?

The Community Program Manager will work very closely with executive and senior leadership throughout the Church to identify opportunities suitable for community development. This person will also work with internal developers to identify, design and develop tools that can be leveraged by community developers. These tools may include APIs, Web Services, publishing or hosting platforms and documentation.

This person has the exciting responsibility in leading the Church’s efforts to establish community software development efforts. The Community Development Program Manager will work with key stakeholders to identify opportunities to leverage community resources to design, develop and maintain software applications that can be made generally available. Success in these endeavors will greatly accelerate the development and proliferation of technology that can be used by church members and local leaders.

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Technical Program Manager - Community Development

So, if I were you, given that you’ll be much happier if you code for open-source projects, as Jon Williams of Kaplan Test told the OSBC audience earlier this week, and you’ll be much better paid as an open-source developer, put down that C++ manual and start writing some open-source code. I’m happy to be tithed to pay you.

It does my heart good to see my church putting its tithing dollars to work in an inspired cause: open source. A friend just sent me a job posting on the LDS Church’s website calling for a Linus Torvalds-like figure to lead open-source development efforts for the LDS Church and its IT projects.

Description:

You may not want those missionaries knocking on your door, but you’ve got to admit that every religion needs at least one Linus Torvalds.

You bet it is. As just one example, I’m a genealogy enthusiast. Think of how cool it would be if genealogy worked upon open-source principles rather than the klugey, time-intensive way that it currently does? (I’m not just talking about the research side of it, but also the LDS Church’s old-fashioned database architecture it uses, i.e., a big Oracle server rather than clusters of MySQL servers. Stop wasting my tithing on Larry Ellison’s jets when Google et al. have demonstrated that clustered MySQL can spank Oracle.)

The person filling this position must be a self-starter, and willing and excited to pioneer the use of volunteer developers in the creation of Church software applications. The job will be challenging — but the potential impact is enormous.

(Credit:
Golden State Warriors blog)

“The issue is that anyone can be a blogger. In about 10 seconds,” Cuban wrote. “I have to make some sort of judgment on who should qualify for access. I’m not prepared to make that judgment yet. I haven’t decided what the parameters will be.”

The kerfuffle allegedly began when Tim MacMahon, who blogs for the Dallas Morning News, wrote something to the effect that the Mavs needed a new coach. On the same day the story was published, Cuban bounced MacMahon from the locker room. Days later, the team issued a new policy. No one who writes full-time for the Web is allowed in the Mav’s locker room.

Why would the founder of Broadcast.com and the owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks force bloggers into a digital ghetto by limiting their access to his basketball team? Isn’t he a card-carrying member of the digerati?

But by limiting access to bloggers, Cuban is discriminating against a form of journalism that is practiced by every major publication in the country and one which is growing in influence every day. Cuban argues that he’s not trying to pick on bloggers as a group.

Technology and new media made Mark Cuban a billionaire.

By banning bloggers from the Maverick’s locker room, that’s what he’s doing, according to several journalism poobahs, including the Society of Professional Journalists.

Mark Cuban wants bloggers out of locker room

Come on Mark, do you really want to be compared to Al Davis?

At the same time he’s unfairly tarnishing blogging’s image.

“Bloggers can be journalists,” he said. “Bloggers can have journalistic standards. However, not all do… The one thing I know for sure is that because someone is a blogger for a big company, doesn’t make him or her “better” or more qualified blogger.”

Cuban, as a friend to new media and technology and someone who I think tries to be fair to reporters, should rescind his blogger policy.Bloggers aren’t going away.

He has a point. The Internet enables anyone to blog and to call themselves a blogger. If the Mavericks handed out press credentials to anyone calling themselves a blogger, press row would fill half of the American Airlines’ Center, where the team plays.

The Mavericks said the decision was made because there’s too little space in the locker room to accommodate everyone. In an e-mail to CNET News.com, Cuban explained his view.

He has to know if he slammed the door on superstar columnists like Michael Wilbon or Mitch Albom, their employers, The Washington Post or Detroit Free Press wouldn’t put up with it. Just ask Al Davis, owner of the NFL’s Oakland Raiders, who tried to ban a newspaper reporter in Los Angeles years ago. The major papers and TV stations in town threatened to stop covering the team and Davis soon backed down.

As a former sportswriter, I’ve covered Cuban for both sports and technology stories. He is one of the most accessible team owners and technology heavyweights there is. He answers e-mails at all hours and about all subjects. He doesn’t duck anyone. But in this situation, it looks like MacMahon’s story ticked him off and he saw a way to weed out journalists he doesn’t like.

But the symbolism of the nation’s most populous state deciding–should the Legislature agree with Nava–that one of Homeland Security’s most high-profile initiatives is deeply flawed is undeniable. Because California’s costs will be so high, with one estimate in the neighborhood of $500 million, at a time when the state budget deficit has grown to $16 billion, the legislature now has a strong incentive to find a way to cut costs.

(Credit:
Pedro Nava)

“I quite frankly think the Legislature will support this measure, my resolution, because there are too many unanswered questions,” Nava, who represents part of Santa Barbara and Ventura counties, said in an interview on Tuesday. Liberal groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and conservative-libertarian ones like Gun Owners of America support his approach, he added.

Last year, Denise Blair, the assistant deputy director of the California Department of Motor Vehicles said of Real ID: “We’re certainly not the rabble-rousers out there trying to lead a rebellion” against the law.” In a statement in January, the California DMV said the Department of Homeland Security’s final Real ID regulations will “further strengthen the security of our driver licenses and identification cards.”

California State Assembly member Pedro Nava

The State of California has for years been a supporter of Real ID, if not an altogether enthusiastic one. Now that may be about to change.

California State Assembly member Pedro Nava, the influential Democratic chairman of the transportation committee, has introduced an anti-Real ID resolution. It asks the state’s congressional delegation in Washington, D.C., to “support measures to repeal Real ID.”

Nava’s legislation isn’t as sweeping as what other states, such as New Hampshire, Montana, and South Carolina, have already enacted. It still would permit California to comply with Real ID while its congressional delegation tries to rewrite the law.

Until now, California has been a lukewarm supporter of the law. Federal regulations creating a uniform national ID card–called Real ID–take effect on May 11. The law promises to cause travel headaches and problems entering federal buildings for residents of states that have not agreed to comply or request an extension. (See our special report from last month.)

Nava’s bill was introduced on Monday; he predicts committee hearings within a month and a floor vote in the Assembly within two months.